WIN SF Event Recap: Designing Your Personal Business Model
On September 26th, WIN SF and Business Models Inc. joined forces to host an interactive workshop at Bespoke about designing your personal business model. During this workshop, we applied BMI's proprietary tool, the Business Model Canvas, in order to map out our Personal Business Models. By applying the same principles we use in innovation to our own careers, we were able to uncover new career options, leverage our strengths, define our career non-negotiatiables, analyze the competition, and future-proof for success.
The workshop was hosted by Maaike Doyer, Global CFO and Strategy Designer at Business Models Inc., a strategy and innovation agency, and author of the best-selling book Business Model Generation. Additionally, Maaike co-wrote Business Model You, the book that acted as the foundation for our workshop. Just as she does companies across a wide range of industries, Maaike helped us think, innovate and design in order to achieve our personal business models.
Below you’ll find an overview of the workshop, and a few tools we explored during the event.
We kicked off the workshop by acknowledging what we currently know to be true:
The world is changing.
The rate of change is exponential.
Which means the future is uncertain.
If you consider all of this together, it means that in our fast moving, unpredictable world, we can’t wait for opportunities to happen. We have to make them happen. It’s not about waiting and reacting, its about making something happen.
After kicking off, we learned about some of the tools that BMI uses to facilitate conversations about building your personal business model, including the Business Model Canvas, the Design Criteria Canvas, and the Cover Story Canvas. Explanations of each tool are included below as well as the order in which you’re meant to use the tools.
STEP 1
THE BUSINESS MODEL CANVAS
The Business Model Canvas is designed to help you understand and define your business model in a structured way. It guides you through the first step in the process of designing your own personal business model: evaluating yourself where you stand today. Answer the following questions on a sheet of paper, or fill out in the worksheet here:
Who are you? What do you have? Consider what it is that you’re currently working with. Start with your key resource(s). This could be a super power, your education, your experience, your network, etc.
What are the things that you do? Think about the key activities you engage in on a daily basis. For example, if you’re an innovation strategist, you design and execute research on a daily basis.
Who is/are your customer(s)? Who do you help? This could be your boss, colleague or someone in your professional network, or could be your friend, significant other, roommate or your family.
What value do you provide your customer? How do you help them? What is your unique value prop? Reflect on what value you bring to your audience.
How do you interact with your customers? Define your unique relationship and communication style. For example, some of us are a combination of formal and direct while others would describe ourselves as casual and collaborative.
How do you deliver this value? How does your audience know you? For this, think about the channels that you use to deliver value.
Who is/are your key partner(s)? Who helps you? Similar to your customer, this could be your boss, colleague or someone in your professional network, or could be your friend, significant other, roommate or your family.
What do you get? What does it bring you? This category includes everything from salary to emotional satisfaction. Do you enjoy the travel aspect of your job? Does it teach you new skills? Are you fairly compensated? Include all of that here.
What do you give? What does it cost you? Here, you must codify what your job costs you, inclusive of everything from daily stress to time commuting.
STEP 2
Now that we’ve identified our current state, we must determine where we want to go next. What is our direction? What is our ultimate desired state? BMI has built two tools that can help us arrive at our individual answers to these difficult questions. Each tool uses a different technique to help you envision your ideal personal business model. Try both, and see which one works better for you!
TOOL 1: THE DESIGN CRITERIA CANVAS
The Design Criteria Canvas is designed to help you identify which elements are most important to you, and where you have some flexibility in your personal business model. Just as you did in the previous step, answer the following prompts on a sheet of paper, or fill out in the worksheet here:
Must: Include your “must-haves” here. For example, some people must have flexibility to be able to work from home while others must have a dog friendly office. Some people must have the opportunity to take on more responsibility quickly, while others must have a work life balance.
Should: Include the elements that are not absolutely necessary, but that you would ideally have, here. For example, should have a generous PTO policy.
Could: Include elements that could exist in your ideal job situation, but that aren’t necessarily important to you. For example, could have opportunity for work travel.
Won’t: Include your non-negotiatble, absolutely “will nots” here. For example, will not work on a team where most of the team works out of a different location.
You may find yourself adjusting your answers as you go, which is totally fine! Additionally, your answers to these categories will change with time. It’s important to revisit this exercise every few months to see how your priorities have changed and how you should shift your personal business model in response.
TOOL 2: THE COVER STORY CANVAS
The Cover Story Canvas is less literal than the Design Criteria Canvas, but helps you to project yourself into the future by imagining a cover story about you/your company in a best-selling magazine. This allows you to think beyond right now, and focus on what you would like to achieve. Once you are able to visualize and codify your biggest hopes and dreams, you can begin to think through the process of getting there.
Answer the following prompts on a piece of paper, or fill out the worksheet here. For this exercise, there are two steps.
Step 1: Define the time frame and magazine. Decide how far into the future you’re visualizing. Is it 5 years? 10 years? 20 years? Now, think about which magazine your cover story is featured on. You can select an industry magazine like Fast Company, Entreprenuer, Forbes, Wired or Business Inc, or it could be something slightly more outside of the box such as Domino, Beauty Inc. or Bon Appetit. There are no rules here - it’s your cover story, so you get to decide!
Step 2: Write your cover story. Use the template to write your story. Make it real by crafting headlines, writing quotes and drawing the cover image. Use this creative exercise to help you build your future vision.
The world is changing quickly, and so are we. This means that what worked for us two years ago may no longer work today. Our time with BMI showed us how important it is to constantly re-evaluate our personal business models and gave our us the tools we need to continue to reinvent, redesign and reimagine our careers, so that they can evolve and grow with us. We hope you took this away from the evening, too.
Do you have tips to share on this topic from your own experience? Do you have any follow up questions on any of the above content? Just want to chat? Drop us a line at team@womenininnovation.co.
Written by Gabby Andrade. Photos by Kara Albe.
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